I am writing you this open letter on my blog because while your writing about games is all over the internet, your e-mail address is mentioned nowhere. I am writing to you because of the article named "Fellowship of the Ding" in Massive Magazine issue #1 that you wrote. Under the subheading of "In other cases the drama is personal" you write: "Tobold, who's been blogging about his experiences in multiple online worlds since 2003, recently encapsulated the guild drama experience when he blogged about ..." and then quoted some text I wrote about guild drama literally.
I was neither informed nor asked for permission to use my writing in a paid-for print magazine. Imagine my surprise to pay for a magazine and find out I was partly paying for my own words. I get quoted quite often by different blogs, but at least those have the courtesy to provide a link to my blog, and they don't charge their readers for my words. I find your cavalier attitude to intellectual property and the writing of other people disturbing as well as unprofessional. Just because you can find a text by typing "guild drama" in Google doesn't mean you are free to use it.
As you wrote about my blog post: "His blog post caused - you guessed it - another round of guild drama, as multiple other guildies ignited a flame war, ripping everyone associated with the discussion to shreds". If you are so good at guessing, you could have imagined that this isn't exactly the story from my blog I would have chosen to appear in print. There was a lot of unpleasantness involved, and it lead ultimately to major changes in the way how I blog about my game experiences nowadays.
Next time you want to quote my blog for commercial purposes, please ask for permission first.
Tobold
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